Former TV anchor gets life for stabbing her 80-year-old mother in bed, and family told the court she ‘went to her death knowing’ who attacked her

Angelynn Mock, a former television news anchor, has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years for the death of her 80-year-old mother, Anita Avers, in Wichita, Kansas, according to Law&Crime. Mock, 48, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in August.

Mock wept during the hearing and declined to address the court. Avers’ stepdaughter, Sonja Kreutziger, told the court the victim was a “bright, compassionate loving woman that wanted to make every moment a moment of beauty.” Kreutziger said her stepmother had defensive wounds on her arms, which she said meant Avers woke during the attack.

Mock worked as a morning anchor for KTVI, the Fox station in St. Louis, from 2011 to 2015. Wichita police responded shortly before 8 a.m. on Halloween morning last year to a home in the 1500 block of East Crowley and found Mock covered in blood outside. Inside, they found Avers unresponsive in her bed with multiple stab wounds, and she was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Family members say Halloween will never feel the same after the killing.

Kreutziger said the person she knew as “gentle, kind Angie” ambushed Avers while she slept, and she described the attack as “so devastating, so calculated, so demonic.” Avers’ niece told the court the family once celebrated Halloween with costume contests and jack-o’-lanterns, and that the holiday no longer feels the same to them.

A probable cause affidavit said blood was found throughout the home and that several knives and a cheese grater were on a pillow next to Avers’ body. Mock told police she went to talk with her mother about a potential job and found her sharpening knives in bed. She said her mother came at her with a knife, and that she stabbed her to save herself.

Detectives noted that Mock gave inconsistent accounts of who attacked whom first. She asked to speak to an attorney, which ended the interview, and she was treated at a hospital for several lacerations on her hand. A neighbor, Alyssa Castro, told a local station that Mock approached her vehicle covered in blood and asked to call 911, and that Mock seemed “pretty shaken up.”

Investigators spoke with Avers’ husband, Mock’s stepfather, who said Mock had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and had previously spent time in a mental hospital, according to the affidavit. He said Mock lost her anchor job after an “explosive situation involving alcohol,” and that, as far as he knew, she was taking her medication.

While in custody, Mock reportedly called her mother the devil in statements she made to herself. Family concerns about a parent’s mental state also figure in a recent South Carolina case, where a mother is accused in her daughters’ deaths.

Competency questions followed the case from its early stages. Judge Jeff Goering deemed Mock incompetent to proceed to trial in January and ordered that she be hospitalized for restoration of competency. However, after a doctor’s most recent report, he declared her competent in July, which cleared the way for the guilty plea and sentencing.

Avers was a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist with about 20 years of experience, according to her professional biography. The biography says she treated adults for depression, anxiety, trauma, and mood disorders as well as relationship issues, including couples and family conflict.

Under the sentence, Mock could become eligible for parole after 25 years, at which point a parole board would decide whether she is released.